Google: Why We’re Not Going to Offer Professional Services

Reporter

Google sympathizes with CIOs who aren’t quite comfortable with its limited customer support for Google Apps. But Jocelyn Ding, the company’s vice president of enterprise operations, said the company will continue relying on third party software vendors that assist customers with its collaboration software because Google is a product and technology company. “Our execution strategy is through partners,” Ding said. “It’s very deliberate for us that we don’t compete with them.”

When a large customer such as Roche or BBVA Group agrees to pay Google for its e-mail, word processing and spreadsheet applications, Google sends technical experts to help the IT staff set up the technology. But Google points smaller customers to partner companies, such as Dito LLC, Cloud Sherpas and Onix Networking, for help migrating to and setting up their users on Apps. Any customer running Apps can connect with Google technical experts over the phone or online at no additional charge, Ding said.

Ding clarified Google’s position after Kaplan CIO Edward Hanapole, who is moving 30,000 employees to Google Apps from Microsoft software, said the third-party approach left him feeling a little bit removed from the software source. Hanapole, who uses Dito for migration help, said that while he likes ease-of-use of Google Apps, Google could be better structured to support customers. “A lot of the traditional CIOs moving into this domain are not going to be comfortable with the level of enterprise support you’re going to get from Google…,” Hanapole told CIO Journal.

One reason Google eschews professional services is that such a unit would clash with Google’s culture for simplicity; the software is designed to just work. Another reason Google won’t offer full professional services is that it would eat away at its cost structure, said IDC analyst Melissa Webster. Google, whose enterprise business is reportedly operating at a $1 billion annual run-rate, charges only $50 per user, per year in large part because it doesn’t have to pay a large group of customer service reps.

Ding said Google’s decision was made by former Google enterprise president Dave Girouard more than five years ago, before Apps launched for businesses in February 2007 and before the suite was seen as a potential revenue generator. To be sure, Google’s partners ecosystem works for most Apps customers.

Dominion Enterprises CIO Joe Fuller hired Apps partner Onix to switch over 4,000 employees to Google last year. If Fuller has any tech issues, he goes directly to Google and the company responds within two hours. Gilt Groupe CIO Steve Jacobs, who recently switched to Apps, said his roughly 1,000 employees experienced a cultural learning curve as they adapted to the new product after using Microsoft for five years. But the migration was ultimately successful. “It’s a really good product,” he said of Apps.

CORRECTION: Any customer running Apps can connect with Google technical experts over the phone or online at no additional charge. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that only large customers are provided with this service.

I'm managing Google Apps (Business) for +2500 staff and the one criticism is that while Google does respond, the response is anywhere between 2 and 10 hours, and there's no way of making a feature request or tracking it. As an admin, I'd like to know the actual time a user logged in and this is far from accurate, even after the domain time zone has been set. It's impossible to audit how many 'sites' exist, when using a 'Group' as a newsletter, it's impossible to locate a non-domain based email address. Auditing as a function of searching, is something I thought Google would do best. We're requested to personalize our main login page and this as well hasn't happened. How do things get better with Google? They haven't discovered that process yet...

5:48 pm June 16, 2012

Anon wrote:

You seriously didn't get fired after that one article? Wow.

2:27 am June 16, 2012

M Longsworth wrote:

We used a partner in Brisbane australia for our migration and setup support. They were fantastic, and highly trained by Google. We tried direct support from Google, but recieved much more timely and high level support from their partner Cloud Assist (www.cloudassist.com.au). We did try going directly to Google, but they weren't really too helpful and were quick to introduce us to their partner. When i discuss our migration with friends in the industry, i refer them directly to Cloud Assist, instead of Google.

1:07 am June 16, 2012

Cloud Logic Australia wrote:

Why pay for something you may never use? If Google were to tool up to provide implementation, migration, training and ad-hoc support for the 4 million businesses using Google Apps, they'd need capacity and resources. That cost would be added to the price of Google Apps for all customers. Since some (most?) Google Apps never or rarely need ongoing Google Apps support (maybe with the exception of the initial set up), they'd be paying for something they never use. Resellers like cloudlogic.com meet the need for ad-hoc Google Apps support when customers need it. Everyone wins!

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